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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

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211–220 of 417 posts

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#211
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just that sci fi authors try to see into the future and have to write things interesting. There's two ways: - novel idea or technology - counterintuitive effect of technology I think the second is easier written as "what if Good Thing was actually Bad". So that's what you get. The former style is perhaps still available in books like Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. But the latter style is much more readi…

I mean, you're definitely assuming positive outcomes here too. Far too early to tell how most tech will end up being used.

No, I'm not. I'm simply saying that whether the outcomes are going to be positive or negative, it will always seem like the Torment Nexus. Therefore, something sounding like the Torment Nexus does not provide information towards a prediction that it will be the Torment Nexus.

People warned about the dangers of social media (or with modern LLMs + Diffusion Models and scamming) and that's kinda come true, but people also warned about the dangers of IVF and that's just been good. So what happens is that people always warn about the dangers. Humans are loss-averse so they find it easy to do that.

It is unsurprising that every new tech seems like dystopian literature because there's a lot of dystopian literature focused on the near future and we're good at coming up with negative hypotheses. There is no significance in it.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#212
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of this was even remotely possible less than 5 years ago. Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of such robots (not cherry-picked ads) for ~20 years now. Not a single one has graduated to any mass market real world use case. I'm not saying one shouldn't be hopeful, but it's also not hard to see why people here are generally more conservative about the near future.

> Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of such robots Boston Dynamics hasn't released any actual products. They seem to be focused on flashy demos of robots dancing instead of end user products. As a counterpoint, Unitree right now sells humanoids you can actually buy. They're no where near as good, but you can actually use them.

They do sell Spot, actually

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#214
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so in 2-4 years you can throw out your whole expensive robot because battery wears out? I hate this argument that just to be a bit thinner, the whole device has to be be made throwaway.

Talking about the thinness of a humanoid, maid robot is pretty hilarious.

Humanoid "maid" robots will never be popular in the home until they can effectively simulate the appearance and form factor of a woman or teenage girl. It is what it is.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#215
post #65

I don't understand why this even has to charge at all. It makes sense for multiple reasons to give it 3 batteries that say have 1/3 of the capacity, and make at least 1, if not 2 or 3 capable of charging independently on a station. Then the robot would just go to its station and swap its own batteries. Why even have wireless charging at all? Or even a cable? Or even have it "charge"? Battery swapping seems to make wa…

It depends on the battery life. If the robot lasts all day, then charging at night via standing on a charging pad makes a lot of sense. Creating a removable battery pack adds extra weight and gives the designers less freedom to place the battery pack exactly where it needs to be in the robot frame, or distribute the cells across the frame in strategic locations. Also, the charge rate matters. If robot can charge to 8…

> If the robot lasts all day, then charging at night via standing on a charging pad makes a lot of sense.

If your employees are robots why would you be shutting down at night?

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#216
post #78

All of the examples in videos are cherry picked. Go ask anyone working on humanoid robots today, almost everything you see here, if repeated 10 times, will enter failure mode because the happy path is so narrow. There should really be benchmarks where you invite robots from different companies, ask them beforehand about their capabilities, and then create an environment that is within those capabilities but was not u…

This is always the case, though. The company is few years old. I'm no disciple of humanoids, but stuff has to start somewhere. Unfortunately hype > truth in order to get funding, so it produces incentives to cherry-pick like this.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#217
post #26

The use cases in their videos are interesting, I suppose the world we live in is build for humans, so it makes sense to build a robot that is human shaped. So we don't need to buy new washing machines and redesign our house to get a robot maid. The hotel reception use case seems ridiculous though, if you get rid of a human receptionist, you lose the human element of the check in process, which people like. If you're…

I was recently thinking about this dynamic about human-oriented vs efficiency-oriented innovation. We haven't really hesitated (in, I'd argue, the majority of cases) to pick efficiency over human-friendliness. This seems like it will be a big reckoning as robotics arrives. The argument for humanoids is that the world is built for humans, but as robotics start to be capable of completing tasks end-to-end, then suddenly there is no reason to keep the space human-friendly, and humanoids kinda lose their value.

An illustrative example is a warehouse. They're still partly designed for humans because they're not fully automated, but the need to make them human-friendly will disappear soon.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#218

Folks are very critical. Consider: this is the worst they will ever be. You improve one robot at one task, they all can share that training. It will only get better from here.

I know that a video can be faked, cherry-picked, etc. Even knowing all that, I find this to be significant advancement, scary, and very cool. People being super negative about this is a bit surprising to me.

> People being super negative about this is a bit surprising to me.

We're reaching a point in these advances where EVERYONE is starting to worry about their job security.

And the society we live in - at least in the US - has no safety net ready for a mass replacement of workers with technology like this.

Oh AI took your software job? Good news you can still go into construction - oh wait, that's not an option either. How about housecleaning? Oh no, that's been automated too. Well sorry, we have no safety net for you. Good luck in the streets.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that a video can be faked, cherry-picked, etc. Even knowing all that, I find this to be significant advancement, scary, and very cool. People being super negative about this is a bit surprising to me.

> People being super negative about this is a bit surprising to me. We're reaching a point in these advances where EVERYONE is starting to worry about their job security. And the society we live in - at least in the US - has no safety net ready for a mass replacement of workers with technology like this. Oh AI took your software job? Good news you can still go into construction - oh wait, that's not an option either.…

Yeah, that’s fair.

It will be interesting to see how messed up our political leadership lets things get before they slightly tweak their belief system.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#220
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of such robots (not cherry-picked ads) for ~20 years now. Not a single one has graduated to any mass market real world use case. Good point, which is why Boston Dynamics didn't really excite me. It was very cool to see the bot balance itself while being pushed with a hockey stick, but LiDAR-based pathfinding on hydraulic actuators has never truly felt like the…

Building on the shoulders of giants. Not long ago this smaller form factor battery powered electric robot wouldn't have been possible. The necessary tech for the software is only just starting to work. Post-2024 Atlas is also very impressive.

Also worth noting that Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics in 2021, which I would expect to have been motivated by some sort of plan for productization and mass production.
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